梅菜扣肉 – Preserved Mustard Veggies w/ so delicious pork!

This is one of my favourite-est dishes in the world. and the last time i ate this was maybe 6 years ago. I used to only eat the version my grandma cooked, and ever since she started getting sick and past away, i have not eaten a good version of this dish ever since.

I wanted to cook it the way she used to cook it, cause that's the one i know best. Her's did not involve steaming or cooking the pork and veggies separately. Hers with all together in one pot with loads of yummy salty sauce to go with rice or porridge. So i get out to replicate what she made. and i am so so so so so happy to say that i have done it! with great success. She will be so very proud.

This is a time consuming dish. but it is totally worth it. the 3 of us ate it for dinner for 3 straight nights.

  
Ingredients

1. 500g mei cai (you can use a mixture of sweet and salty or just salty – as you can see, i used 3/4 salty and 1/4 sweet)
2. 6 pieces of pork belly – i'm not sure of the weight though. but a good amount of meat
3. Light soy sauce
4. Dark soy sauce
5. 6 cloves or more garlic, crushed
7. A tiny star anise
8. Water

Directions

You have to wash your mei cai really well. The sweet one doesn't really need soaking but the salty one needs. So after washing, soak the salty mei cai for 3 hours, changing the water every hour.

While doing that, you can start to prepare the pork. I don't like hair on my food, so i pick all the hair out of the pig skin. then give it a good wash.

Boil a pot of water, and place the pork belly in. This cooks and gets rid of 'dirty' things on the pork, like excess blood etc..

Taking a few tablespoons of light soy sauce, sorta marinate the pork belly pieces in it, just for a few minutes. This gives it colour and fragrance when we fry it later.

In a wok, place a little oil and fry the pork belly till all sides are nice and brown. Some sides are more difficult to fry, so don't kill yourself if you can't get all the sides. The hot oil stings!

Place the pork, still hot, into ice cold water. and leave it there for as long as you can. This step is what gives you a wonderfully bouncy and melt in your mouth fats. You can leave the pork in here until your mei cai gets enough soaking time.

Then, slice the leaves of the mei cai into bigger chunks – about 1 cm and the stalk into smaller chunks – about 0.5cm.

Fry the garlic till fragrant and slightly browned. Then add in all the mei cai and fry till fragrant and dry. This can take quite long. I was actually watching tv and cooking this at the same time. but i used a really small – medium fire.

 
Fry fry fry fry till dry and nice. Since it takes a while, you can chop your pork into pieces while frying. Some of them aren't even totally cooked, but it's not a problem at all. Just chop them all up into big chunks. They will shrink slightly, so take that into consideration.

After chopping this up and when you mei cai seems to be done, take out the mei cai and place them on a plate. Adding a little oil, fry the pieces of pork.

It takes time to render the fat and get them all nice and crispy. So i did half a batch and got lazy so i didn't fry the other half. which i think was absolutely fine because these pieces shrunk much more and were harder after the frying and stewing. So half half is good.

Next, i added in 1 cup of light soy sauce and 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce and fried that together with all the pork. When you can smell the fragrance of the soy sauce, add in all the mei cai and mix thoroughly.
 
At this point, i transferred this mixture to a pressure cooker. You can transfer it to the normal pot and cook for around 2 hours or until the pork is amazingly tender. but i had a pressure cooker and we were hungry, so i transferred it to the pressure cooker and topped it up with 4 cups of water, or until the water covered the ingredients. Then add in the star anise – a tiny one or snap off 3 pieces of a big one – not a few hundred, like they like to do here..

Taste! I decided that it wasn't salty and dark coloured enough, so i added another splash of light and dark soy sauce. This is totally to your taste, but i make it slightly saltier because this is definitely a dish to eat with rice or porridge and not on it's own – although, we do eat it like that as well. haha!

Cover and cook! If you're using a pressure cooker, 30 minutes is great on medium pressure.

Next day tastes even better! Add hard boiled eggs before you keep it in the fridge and it will be perfect the next day!

 
Yum! Blogging about this has so totally made me crave for it again!!!

Egg White Lemon Cake! aka Angel Food Cake

I had just made a big batch of ice cream for my upcoming party. and had 6 egg whites leftover. I didn't want to make another egg white omelette, so i searched the net for something else. and i found this!

If you're wondering about the shape. I don't know how to properly line a cake tin. Although i know now, learnt it after placing the cake in the oven. So the shape came out a little weird. but who cares, it still tastes great. It also has a sugary coating on the top and sides of the cake. yum!

 
It is so good. Light yet dense. Totally don't miss the egg yolks at all! So i guess it is a slightly healthier cake since it has low cholesterol.

and it is really simple to make. as long as you have 6 egg whites on hand.

Ingredients

6 large egg whites
180g + 2tbsp caster sugar (if you like it sweeter, you can add more sugar)
160g plain flour
1 heaped tbsp corn flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g melted butter, slightly cooled
Zest from 3/4 lemon

Directions

In a bowl, add the egg whites with 2 tbsp of sugar. Whisk till the egg whites are thick and foamy, before it reaches soft peaks. When it's there, lower the speed to the slowest for 30 secs to get rid of any big air bubbles.

In another bowl, while whisking the egg whites, mix the 180g caster sugar, plain flour, corn flour and baking powder together. Then fold this mixture slowly into the egg whites. You can choose to sieve this mixture, but i wanted it quick, so i didn't and it didn't cause a problem.

Then fold in the melted butter together with the zest. You can add the zest of the whole lemon or as i did, 3/4 of the lemon which gives it a slight lemon fragrance. I only took the upper top most layer of the lemon, the shiny yellow. Didn't grate the light yellow part that's right underneath, although i think that should be fine as long as you don't get the white parts.

Stir them all together and place the mixture into a cake tin. Bake at 180 degrees for 20 mins. Use a skewer to check if it comes out clean. Leave to cool for a while.

It tastes really good warm too.

You can see little bits of brighter yellow in the cake – those are the zest of the lemon.

Yum! I hope you try it too!

5th Year Anniversary – Lunch Cruise!

For our fifth year anniversary (which we originally mistook for 4 years), i surprised fish with a lunch cruise.

We couldn't have chosen a worst timing, it was raining extremely heavily in Sydney that week, so 21/07 was the day, and so we insisted.

 
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY DARLING! this post is a little late though.. hehe :)

Dome Restaurant @ The Arthouse Hotel, Sydney

6 months ago, i bought 2 coupons online for this restaurant, which i had never heard of. but i decided it might be quite nice.

So i went there first with fish on his birthday, but the place was too dark and the pictures didn't work out too well. This time, we went with hui and i used flash, so at least you can see something now!

Entrees

I have to say, their best dishes are their entrees. For me, at least.

  
King Fish & Tiger Prawn Chowder served with garlic croutons. This was delicious! I'll gladly drink more.

Gorgonzola Soufflé served with pumpkin oil & rocket. This was Hui's entree. It was good, especially if you like your blue cheese!

Grilled Queensland Scallops & Gnocchi Medallions with nut brown butter. This was fish's and he loves the scallops. This can also be ordered as a main dish.

Mains

Corzetti Pasta, Pan-Fried with prawns, parmesan, chilli & chives. I ate this the first time as an entree and loved it so much, i ordered it as a main this time round. It's like aglio olio. I like.

Grilled Eye Fillet Of Beef with mash potato, agrodolce onions & béarnaise. The first time fish ate this, it wasn't awesome. He ordered it medium well and it came well, so it was a little tough. This time, he ordered it medium and it was perfect. It was so so delicious! He was very nice to share it with us. :)

Handmade Tagliatelle Pasta with sautéed mushrooms, parsley & pecorino cheese. Hui had this and to be perfectly honest, it wasn't that great. She couldn't finish it all and the pasta wasn't as delicious as i had hoped. So, unless this was below standard, i say skip this and go for mine's or fish's.

Sides

We all need a little green, so a side of veggies is perfect.
 
Really quite unnecessary for our meal. but fries if you want. i would say though, skip the fries and eat your veggies!

Desserts

Cinnamon Poached Pear with clove ice-cream & tuile biscuit. This was quite nice, a light and refreshing end.

 
Bread & Butter Pudding with rum & raison ice-cream. If you wanted something richer, this is fish's favourite. It really tastes good. Otherwise, their soft-centred chocolate pudding is great too!

Drinks

We debated a little because i saw all these beautiful drinks being served and i wanted some too! but i'm not a wine drinker and we were afraid the red sangria might be too strong for me, so we tried the white sangria. Very mild, fruity, slightly sweet. Perfect for me. Very easy to drink.

Conclusion

I actually really like it here. It's a place where you can sit down, have a slow meal and a great conversation. I will definitely be back, cause i so like it here. :)

Rocky Road!

I've actually never been a fan of rocky road. until. i tried some that came with the chocolates i bought for fish on our anniversary.

It was delicious!

and i set out to create my own.

 
Ingredients

Marshmallows – 4 flavours and cut them up into 4 small pieces each

 
Desiccated coconut – toasted in a frying pan
Toblerone
Chocolate
and whatever else you wanted, i added corn flakes in another batch

Directions

Melt the chocolate and toblerone over a bain-marie. And leave it aside to cool.

I accidentally added the marshmallows before the chocolates cooled and they just melted into the chocolate. I actually purposely did that the second time because if you melt the raspberry ones, they actually lend a great flavour to the chocolate, but it gets sticky, so just one or two small pieces.

After it's cool, add the ingredients that you want to. Don't worry if it looks like there's a lot of ingredients, it is fine!

Then pour it out onto a tray lined with baking paper or aluminium foil. and leave it in the fridge for around 1/2 – 1 hour.

 
I like to take it out before it gets fully hardened because it makes it much easier to slice into squares.

And there ya go! so simple so nice.

I like to leave them out a little before i eat them as well, don't like eating them when they're extremely hard.

By the way, Hui just finished all of them.